They raced up the F.D.R. Drive, then crossed onto the narrow, tree-lined streets of the Upper East Side. Self-preserving yellow taxis sped out of their way. Stefan swerved dangerously to avoid a Chevrolet that had the impudence to drive at a legal speed. He grinned gloriously (he really was good looking with that white-blond hair and steely eyes), as though he’d made it through yet one more dangerous mission. He swung around the block, then double-parked with a screech beside a row of limousines. Chivalrously, he helped his ladies ascend from their carriage.
Claire was sopping wet. She headed directly for the ladies’ room to put herself back together. The place looked like any local Irish bar, but all New Yorkers knew that this was the only place where the likes of themselves would ever eat dinner next to an authentic film star. Or run into one on the way to the ladies’ room. It was mercifully empty. Claire tore off her blouse and submerged herself as best she could in the sink. She shouldn’t have had all that crummy wine. She sat down on the toilet seat and let her head spin. The wall was papered with starlet’s heads cut out from magazines, then lacquered to an amber sheen. Imagine Johnny Benedetto thinking her a suspect! True, there had been that one moment there when she’d thought the same of him. She buttoned her blouse thoughtfully. Why on earth had her mother cut off all her beautiful hair? Now she looked like all the other ladies out in Richmond Hill. Permanently waved. Next would be a lavender rinse. She’d always been rather proud of her mother’s obstinate disregard for fashion. Her nunlike skin that had never known more than a cheery lipstick to go with a “good” dress. Her sensible shoes. You could grow up as much as you liked but you still wanted your parents to fit some idiotic consistent image you had of them. You wanted them worthy of your own unworthy love. It didn’t seem exactly plausible to Claire, sitting there snug in her sanctuary cubicle, that she had ever been around the world at all. That whole business of the last ten years seemed like a color film she’d absentmindedly watched and not quite gotten the point of. It seemed a lot more as though she were still a kid from Queens who’d come over the bridge for a night on the town and here she was, a little bit tanked, still biting her nails in girlish reminiscence. Perhaps it was the beery atmosphere. One thing was sure, though, she wasn’t a kid. She saw that quite plainly on the back of her hand. The knuckles were going scrunchy and no nightly application of hand cream would ever change that. She licked them soothingly.
Why did Johnny have to be a crook? Whatever he was doing at the track was illegal, she knew that. He was ripping off the public. Or at least the mob. Wasn’t it the mob that ran the track? She could pretty much figure out how it worked. Some mob lackey waited till most of the bets were in and the odds down, then he dropped a substantial wad on a “dark” horse … against the odds but “set” to win … and this just before the track closed the betting windows. As there were no phones at the track, they were pretty safe in keeping the new development from any off-track betting, thus keeping the odds to themselves and their profit enormous. That would be where Johnny and his partner came in. It was actually quite clever. Did she really care if he was ripping off the mob? Or even if he was ripping off that vague entity: the public? Wasn’t Julio Marble doing the same thing? What was it Stefan had said he was getting for just one of those atrocities? Two hundred thousand. Now that was robbery. She wondered what Johnny was doing now? Staking out someone else? And there would be no end to those adventures of his if she were with him. Every time he would walk out the door she’d have to wonder if he’d ever walk back in. She wished she could be more like her mother, who had Zinnie figured for safe in the arms of the Lord, protected by her own guardian angel. Now that was a thought. Claire wondered if she had one. If she had, he would have probably wandered off while she’d been busy researching Hinduism and Buddhism. And now? What was she now, an orthodox agnostic? Or perhaps angels weren’t subject to religion. She stood up and unlocked the door. She looked in the mirror. Not too bad, for a heathen. But was she still considered “in the running”? As a matter of fact, she looked pretty damn good. She picked up her blouse and inspected her breasts. There they were, good as gold, good as new. Happy again, she tucked herself in. Not a moment too soon. The door flew open and there was the flawless, lovely face of this year’s most recognizable starlet. Pride truly cometh, Claire concluded wryly, before a fall. With a humble heart, she headed back to the table.